


new world order

by pharaohleap



Category: Pocket Monsters SPECIAL | Pokemon Adventures, Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Denial of Feelings, F/M, Over the Years, Redemption, attempted genocide, lance more like... langst, no really feelings what are those, that's it that's the pinnacle of this fic you can all go home now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-21
Updated: 2018-06-21
Packaged: 2019-05-26 12:42:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15001109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pharaohleap/pseuds/pharaohleap
Summary: Viridian doesn't breed strong trainers because it has no need for them. (Why you, then? What have you been bred for?)





	new world order

It's a memory – one you can't pinpoint in time, can't remember the befores or afters of. You see it in your dreams from the days you are young to the days you are old. Construction. Smog. The wild Pokemon that flee and, _worse_ , the ones who can't. Your Dratini rots in your arms faster than your powers, still developing can heal it, but you try and you try and you _try_ , because it _can't_ die now, it just _can't_. The three of you were to journey together, Dratini, Magikarp, Lance. You can't be the only one who lives. You _won't_ be.  
  
“You've been born with an amazing power, Lance,” your father's voice tells you, a memory even older still. “You can befriend all of the Pokemon in the world -”  
  
( _\- and what kind of person leaves their friends to die?_ )

 

( --- )

 

Blackthorn is nothing like your home in the lush green forest of Viridian. The ground here is barren, scratched raw by fire and dragons' flame, incapable of supporting plant life any more than the gnarled trees that snake and twist up from the dirt-ridden ground. Supposedly, however, the very ground you scowl at, cursing it all the while for its barrenness has been sacred to your lineage for generations longer than a child your age should be able to comprehend. The oldest of the dragon masters trained in their arts here in days long past, the dirt you walk now cleansed by sages of ages long lost to anything but scrolls kept in the Dragons Den. ( _But the wind carries the dirt, you think, and time takes life and gives it back anew. How much of this land must be replaced before it's become something else entirely?_ ) You're young, young enough that you may even be forgiven for your rudeness if you vocalized your thoughts – but you're also _smart_ , sharper than that, away from the scrutiny in the eyes of those who tower over you even now.  
  
The principal is simple. If things had gone their way, your mother would have been a woman born of this very city. Your father would have taken up the mantel of gym leader. You would have never known the wonders of Viridian's lovely forest: a hypothetical that makes your heart ache just thinking about it. Understanding _what_ these nameless strangers grit their teeth over, however, and understanding _why_ are two very different things. _It's all in the realm of the adults_ goes unsaid, spoken without word as if it is basic knowledge that the understanding you lack now will dawn on you with age.  
  
( _It never does._ )  
  
The only person here who does not make your skin crawl with their thinly veiled acrimony – or, rather, in her case, a lack thereof entirely – is your cousin, Clair. A mere two years separate you physically, but her attitude, typical of that of girls her age communicates that she hasn't seen what you've seen. Doesn't know you know. Doesn't seethe with anger at the sight of buildings stacked tall and rich men with their trembling Pokemon chained down on a leash. Her eyes are still that of a child when your father leaves you to “play as children will do” in favor of backroom meetings and family matters that don't concern you, and for a moment, you can almost find it enviable. That Horsea is her first partner, not a replacement. But then, neither is your Dratini, larger than the last, sticking closer to your side. Some things are simply irreplaceable.  
  
Despite first appearances, though, Claire isn't as insufferable as you'd first assumed her to be. In fact, as time passes, her company becomes one of few bright beacons in your childhood. Blackthorn may be a stain on the region for as for as you care – your dragons get on just fine in the forest, the place where _all_ Pokemon, dragon or not are seen as equal – but your “little sister” is a constant reminder of the people who exist outside of those buildings stacked tall, those rich men and their trembling Pokemon. She cares about your opinion of her. More importantly, she cares for her Pokemon – her _friends_.  
  
It smolders some of the fire that's been let loose in your heart – but then, only just.

 

( --- )

 

Prodigy, they call you in awed voices, bred for battle. Viridian doesn't breed trainers the way Pallet or Blackthorn does. What need does it have to? The forest quashes all evil, smothers all ill desire, protect its people and lavishes them with gifts. Harvest. Partners. The empathic powers your mother insists you keep secret from any and all. These powers don't earn you an edge when it comes to combat, however, nor do they push you toward the life of a globe trotting trainer. You hear and you heal with the powers the Viridian Forest bestowed upon you – but you also _see_ , see the hate that infects the world, the selfish desires of those that live beyond your city and the forest that cradles it like an infant, coddles it like its treasured spawn. The people here don't know strife, but you don't care about _them_. Just once, you had stepped outside the boundaries, out of the forest's protection, and the evil of the world around you stole from you your partners. Never again, you swear. You'll be stronger than it; stronger than _anyone_.  
  
Your skill is not breed from talent alone. No, no – your skill is forged in the flames of your righteous passion.  
  
All opposition is crushed beneath your foot when it arises. Truthfully, all that comes about are the local children, some younger, some older, all riled up over the prospect of trading blows with the son of a would-be gym leader in Johto. Can it really be called “trading blows”, though, if they never get their turn to strike? “You take this too seriously,” they hiss at you as you secure your full sweeps, your one-turn victories. Will they ever consider that they're not taking this – themselves, their Pokemon's _lives_ – seriously _enough_? Evil rises when good men do nothing, and all that. Why does no one else see it that way?  
  
Perhaps the only thing left here that could give you a challenge, even at the tender age of preteen, is your father, a man who certainly deserved that role of gym leader for more reasons than just the blood of dragon tamers that coursed through his veins. Even if you'd had an interest in challenging him to begin with ( _you don't, and while you've always been quick to pass it off as a matter of apathy, deep down, you know the real reason: you'd lose, undoubtedly, with your skill set, and while your arrogance is only a fraction now of what it will come to be, you don't think you could handle the strike to it all the same_ ), you'd be more surprised to see him accept than deny. It isn't a matter of time or a matter of protection. It isn't even a matter of his loss in interest in battles, disowned and isolated as he has become for a crime no worse than loving a woman with all the sun in her eyes and in her smile.  
  
It's because he's afraid of you.  
  
This, too, goes unspoken, even within the bounds of confidence with your mother. Perhaps he doesn't even see it as fear, not yet. But your soul burns hot – too hot, scarring all those who would dare come close – and you're too powerful for your age, you've too much control over your dragons, you've all the intelligence of a person years your senior without the proper moral understanding that should come with it.  
  
Viridian doesn't breed strong trainers because it has no need for them.  
  
( _Why you, then? You wonder – your father wonders. Why you, with your healing powers, your ability to read their minds, your battle prowess. What have you been breed for?_ )

 

( --- )

 

Your parents are not cruel. You knew it then, in your youth, and you'd know it in the years that would come. Even your father's weariness of your sharp eyes and sharper tongue did not deter him from going above and beyond the call of duty of any paternal figure. Mother: the sun. Father: the moon. Guiding lights, necessities in your childhood, your world gone in an instant without them. But you'd always felt so _detached_ , like their love ran off your shoulders as water did a raincoat, like the smiles you offered them could never mean much more than a calculated upturn of the lips. This, and more ( _your philosophy, your hate, hate,_ hate), you'd tried to explain to your mother carved of sunbeams once, but you'd seen it in her eyes that she hadn't understood, like your words and your rationality had been knocked out of her orbit. Maybe it was. Maybe that's what sent you spiraling outward, lost to the guiding pull of gravity, left to freeze out in the cold, lonely ocean of space.  
  
It's such a _trivial_ thing, like stolen cookies from the cookie jar, or the accidental demolition of your mother's hand crafted works. Hindsight won't even afford you the real cause, just the weight of it: lighter than a feather and not worth your grief. Your father's hand had moved to strike your Dratini with no more force than a slap on the wrist for a misbehaving child – but you'd moved _faster_ , heavier, striking your own flesh and blood with a force strong enough to send that very blood splattering. “ _Don't touch him_ ,” you could hear yourself screaming, out of body, no control.

( _Why, oh why did you do it? You_ know _your father – he would never hurt them for the sake of hurting them – and yet you moved, and you struck, and there was fear in his eyes and shock in your mother's –_ )  
  
Things aren't the same after that.  
  
Not for a lack of trying, that is. Dinner is the same standard fair as always: home cooked, spent in the company the two people you've known all your life. You never seem to catch his eye, though, after that incident. He'd laugh and he'd smile as he always did, hearty and loud enough to shake the ice path down to its frigid rocks, but he'd never really _look_ at you. And your mother, your poor mother. There's only so much damage control to be done.  
  
It was only a matter of time, of course, before you packed your bags like all aspiring trainers did and set your sights on the road beyond Viridian City. Goodbye parents, goodbye forest. You'd always figured you'd stay a little longer – but did you really have the option anymore?  
  
( _You wonder, idly, that if you challenged him now, if you could best your father in battle._  
  
( _For once, you aren't certain that the answer is 'no'._ )

 

( --- )

 

Your world view had been limited by the treeline of Viridian and the hilltops of Blackthorn. Nothing compares to life on the road and the knowledge it affords you. The world is not just corrupt – it's so much _worse_ than you'd imagined. Pollution, Pokemon tied to poles, industrial _rot_. You try to bring a little girl's best friend back from the brink of sludge-induced death, but all over again, the poor thing is slipping through your fingers, an echo of that time, a mockery of your self-proclaimed _destiny_.  
  
All of your skill, all of your _power_ – what good is it for if all your friends keep _dying_?  
  
( _A question you don't ask yourself: When did all of your good intentions turn sour? When did it occur to you to seek to fix the problem at its supposed “source” rather than trying,_ failing _, to clean up to mess afterward? When, when, when -_ )

 

( --- )

 

Agatha holds an advantage in age and experience by leagues, and perhaps she could have boasted might, had you crossed paths just some two years earlier. When you _do_ , however, she is a wicked old woman driven by spite, clinging feebly to a hate for humankind much like she does her cane, and your own stampede of a drive knocks the hag right off her feet in a whirlwind of thunder and rain. You may have done worse had there not been an alignment of ideals... or, more accurately, had her cohort not stepped between to offer a truce. Beaten or no, you know strength when you see it, and the claims of having matched the power of champions in years passed does not strike you as as unbelievable as the words would have coming from another mouth. Lorelei, too, has stories to recount of her youth, when her Dewgong was but a Seel on the brink of death and her partner-in-crime was the only one with the means or the the motivation to save its life. Part of you envies her, _them_. You can see the tale she spins so _clearly_ in your mind, right up until the moment when salvation comes and everything turns out alright in the end. Your Dratini, your Magikarp didn't breath another breath after their run in with the cruelties of the world around them. When you grew up, you'd nothing by your side by the occasional reminder of your family's outcast status and the hatred that festered and festered, _unbearable_.  
  
What interests you about the duo, however, is not their stories of strength and agony, or even the battle skills that you experience first hand. It's the reflection of feelings you'd thought isolated you from the rest of the world – and the knowledge they impart on you that would come to lay the ground for the plan that would shake Kanto to its bedrock.  
  
“I'm going to rid this world of evil,” you tell them in a flourish. The offer you extend needs no words.  
  
_Will you join me?_

 

( --- )

 

You take on the title of Dragon Master out of spite for your father's unloving family in the years of plotting that follow. The others are none the wiser, of course. You're but sixteen years of age and already sporting a Dragonite, an ancient Pokemon, a Gyarados larger than the rest, and that doesn't begin to touch on the dozens upon dozens of Dragonair you have reigned in to do your bidding. Dragon Master is right: you reign supreme over all who would qualify in the fields of Kanto.  
  
Loathsome as Blackthorn was and has become in your anger-blinded life, your frayed ties to it lend you knowledge of a creature from Johto mightier than even Team Rocket's man-made monstrosity, a legend so powerful that to control it would be to hold the life of the entire region ( _perhaps the_ world) in the palm of your hand. Agatha has learned, too, in her age of a device created to collect and multiply the energy given off by trainer badges, the likes of which had been used for such horrific deeds as merging legendaries into one flying chimera, or more heroic ones such as the replenishing of fields long dubbed barren. It won't be _enough_ , though, is the problem. Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres are but Weedle in the face of your grand designs – you need power far greater, _more_ of it. Lorelei, here, plays her part, searching the seas past her home on the Sevii Islands in pursuit of another legend still. Victory is assured the moment she contacts you with its coordinates: Cerise Island.  
  
The location is found. The method is set. Your goal is finally within your reach. What stands in your way alone, then, is the potential for future opposition. What stands in your way is _Champion Red_.  
  
Bruno is a last minute and unwitting addition to the team. When you first encounter one another, truly, you _abhor_ him. He cares not for the mission that the three of you have dedicated your time, your efforts, your whole _lives_ to, preaching, instead, of the honor of battle and the unparalleled joy of a good fight. Someone who only cares for pitting Pokemon against one another rather than the lives of the Pokemon themselves is as good as a Ratatta's dung as far as you are concerned, but the reality of the situation is his far and wide pursuit of challenge has earned him the skills to near rival that of your allies, and said allies are insistent on sending someone _else_ out to take care of Red in their place. It's the safest bet, should the champion somehow gain the upper hand. At best, no one will have their identities compromised. At worst, victory can be assured in an ambush; those voodoo dolls aren't simply for _show_ , after all.  
  
You lure him in, then, with the promise of combat as he's never seen, and you ( _intentionally_ ) fail to inform him of all the nooks and crannies of your scheme. In a one-on-one battle, just as with Agatha, your victory is assured from the very first order, but where all others have mocked you for that dangerous glint in your eye, _this_ buffoon only thanks you for time well spent. “And all I have to do is fight this boy?” he asks when explained his role in the grand play that's about to be put on for all of Kanto to see. “If it's as much of a challenge as you say, I have no objections.”  
  
Agatha's arm cuffs are fitted nicely onto his wrists before the night has finished, and the ability to manipulate him as you all so choose is displayed in full. With this, you think, everything is set to begin your steps toward your new world order.

 

( --- )

 

Red falls like a meteor, Lorelei tells you with a malicious glint in her eye. The only hitch in her plan was that Pikachu of his, slipping through their grasp despite its frozen limbs and escaping to who knew quite where in the region below. She promises with certainty its capture, and with it, the last shred of evidence of the champion's whereabouts and well-being, but you could care less. Who's coming to save him? The runners up of the League tournament? If the strongest of the lot of them was bested by a single member of your total four, what have you to fear from two silver medals attempting to take you on in vengeance-blinded rage? You hardly feared Red to begin with, simply went along with the wishes of your cohorts to spare yourself the energy you'd waste arguing.  
  
But she's a perfectionist through and through, fixated on tying up her loose ends. So be it. You've the bigger picture to look at. What's a lowly Pikachu in the face of region-wide destruction?

 

( --- )

 

You meet him first in Vermillion. Why you were there to begin with loses itself to you with the passage of time, a secret well kept even from the other members of the Elite Four, but it must have meant _something_ to you in the moment, causation enough to drag yourself from hiding and reveal your form to the terrified crowds. ( _Not that any of them_ see _you._ )  
  
Is it the blood of dragons or the gift of the forest that allows you to exert your will on the Pokemon around you? It's a question that will haunt you, vaguely, for the remainder of your life. In the moment, you don't question the “how”s, the “where”s, the “why”s – you simply _do_ , laying claims on the Dragonair that they would so casually hand to the first undeserving trainer with the money to pay them off. What a waste, you think. What a waste, too, the whole of Vermillion becomes with a single mighty blast. You feed the creature your spite, your rage, and cities crumble before the _Hyper Beam_ it learned in the instance you took control of it. Your objective, unfortunately, is a step ahead of you, rendering your efforts virtually useless. Most of the population of the city had fled before the fireworks had _really_ begun, as well; you doubt you stole even twenty lives in the rapid fire wreckage you caused. All the same, small numbers don't seem to be a concern of the little blonde child in the straw hat, probably no more than five years your junior, chasing after you with a Doduo on land. You wouldn't even have noticed him had it not been for his Pikachu – _the_ Pikachu, the very one that Lorelei had been ranting and raving about in the recent past – climbing up the tail of your newly acquired dragon-type.  
  
You hold it in your arms, a friend, just long enough to realize who, exactly, it is. When you do, you toss it back like litter.  
  
Word of the fisherman trainer and his meddlesome ways had caught up to you enough to know who it is that follows you with a glance, and while your words would lead him to believe that your assault is simply to remove witnesses, aggravation motivates your actions. _This_ is the trainer who outwitted your ally? _This_ is the trainer that Kanto has sent to halt your plans? Acid burns the tip of your tongue when you tell him of your vision: a haven free of cruel humans and their selfish ambitions, a utopia that you will shape on the corpses of the trainers you will slaughter in the days to come. The fool can't even bother to _try_ to block your _Hyper Beam_ attacks – not that he'd succeed if he put in the effort.  
  
It's with great reluctance, then, that you must admit he catches you by surprise, and maybe even earns a shred of your respect. Even you would have not thought to repurpose a Pokemon's Substitution energy as a makeshift surfboard, and the electric attack that he deals you before you make your escape is far stronger than any he'd tried to strike you with before, almost as though the intensity of the bolts grew with the intensity of his emotions. You pull your retreat early, aware that you could finish him off then and there, but conflicted by the thought. Only a trainer like you should be able to channel your emotions through your Pokemon. Only a trainer of the Viridian Forest.  
  
You don't consider it a loss. If anything, you consider it a _challenge_. Your interest in Yellow has been minimal at best up until this point, but now, as you turn tail back to Cerise, you swear to empty air: _You will make him pay._

 

( --- )

 

He's just like you. _Just like you._ It makes your blood boil all the hotter when he shows up with the fire-type specialist in tow on your island; not that there was any doubt that he _would_.  
  
Team Rocket lending their aid to the trainers who had defeated them just two years prior was something you had not considered a possibility. You'd figured their egos too bloated and their need for revenge too petty to ever let them stoop to the level that would allow them to seek the aid of children. Still, you've faith in your fellow members of the Elite Four. Your personal feelings toward them are indifferent. You've seen them all in battle. You've seen what became of the Champion. Rocket's admins make little difference in the grand scheme of things, you're certain.  
  
It comes as a shock, then, when Blaine comes at you alone, and with Rocket's beast as his desired battling partner, no less. It's an interesting fight, to say the very least. You've fought trainers of all sorts in your time spent on this filth-ridden planet, everything from children who have just been granted their very first friend to those who would claim themselves “masters”, and while some have been better trainers than others, no single Pokemon has ever fought you quite so hard as _this_. Mewtwo. Man-made. Obviously tied to its trainer; it doesn't take a mind reader to understand the dynamic from a glance. You combat him with Dragonair and Aerodactyl, the weaker of your main forces, identical to the swarms you and your colleagues have sent to raze the mainland as part of your final effort for planet eradication, and while damage is sustained, they hold up as well as you would expect. By the time both genetic chimera and trainer have been claimed by exhaustion and the link that bonds them, keeps them from fighting, your own Pokemon's breath come out as haggard. Had their plan to trap your remaining party in their PokeBalls gone according to plan, you may have feared... _maybe_. You look down at your only opponent now, however, and think you would not have need of Dragonite and Gyarados even had they been confined to their place on your belt. So long as the power of the Viridian Forest flows through your fingertips, you are _unstoppable_.  
  
( _But then – isn't he?_ )  
  
“You're going to fight me with that team? Not one of them as evolved!”  
  
You'd almost find it a mockery if you didn't first find it so _laughable_. His “victory” in Vermillion had barely been so at all, a one-on-one match pitting together a Pokemon that was not his and a Pokemon that was not yours. Your plan had taken into account only one potential opponent who could pose a threat and disposed of him before you began, but that couldn't help your glory-flooded mind from picturing what a final confrontation on the peaks of Cerise Island may have looked like yet: You, champion of justice, ambassador of Pokemon worldwide, bathed triumphantly in the pale moon's glow; they, a wide-mouthed villain, destroyer of peace, cackling into the night like a madman. Your imagination had not bothered to touch on a little boy with his over-sized straw hat and merry band of _infants_. You almost feel bad for the pummeling you're about to put them through. _Almost_.  
  
Yellow continues to surprise you in little ways. Despite his lack of physical or magical might, generally hindered, as well, by his instance on keeping his Pokemon at their base form for some sort of self “preservation” ( _a trainer should want the best for their Pokemon, and the best for their Pokemon is evolution – the divide between you only widens_ ), his ability to think on his feet and combine his Pokemon's individual areas of expertise _almost_ make him a force to be reckoned with. He surfs through lava like a madman – ingenious. He replicates Mewtwo's ant trap in an instant – unthinkable. He'd have almost killed you had he not hesitated. Weak, weak, _weak_. The future cannot be changed by those who would spare their enemies. It's a lesson you'll beat into him until there isn't anything let of him to beat.  
  
He's not the only one here who can craft an unthinkable strategy on the fly, after all.  
  
You'll let it go down in history: the day you beat a child to death with nothing more than bubbles that disappeared into the sun.  
  
It's a strategy you've played in your head a thousand times for the sake of it, rising high in an impenetrable bubble and attacking from near and far with attacks that cannot be seen or countered. The only thing holding you back was a suitable opponent to use it against, one who did not fall within minutes of the start of their confrontation. How peculiar that it is Amarillo of all people who pushes you enough to make you think this necessary – how peculiar that you're _glad_ that it's him, glad that he is the first to see it, and likely the last. His arm snaps under the force of something he cannot see and cannot defend against, and you throw your head back in a cackle – as a madman, yourself – because maybe, just maybe, champion of justice or no, that is what you've become.  
  
Victory over the Dex Holder before you isn't your goal in Cerise's burning, boiling crater, however. In fact, his presence here is little more than a distraction, one that can easily be shrugged aside when the _real_ show begins. Team Rocket's admins have gathered and split to all corners of the island: Sabrina, Lr. Surge, Koga. Did any of them know that their long-lost boss had come as well?  
  
Three of you, all gathered together. Viridian trainers, all traveling down such different, beaten paths.  
  
Yellow looks as though the whole of the mainland has come to rescue him when Giovanni takes his first steps onto the battlefield, only to realize why having the mainland, or anyone at _all_ , really, show their face here is as good as a death wish. Despite yourself, despite your _plan_ , you find yourself watching Yellow more carefully than the man who downs you. Relief, given way to terror, given way to determination, given way to confusion, given way to awe; then you tell him ( _not the person you speak to, but the person watching you both from afar_ ) that you know who he is and what he's done, and that hopeful little face drowns itself in horror. No enemy-of-an-enemy-is-my-friend to be exploited tonight, you see. Not that there was time enough for it. The leader of Kanto's most heinous crime organization is as blind as he is self-centered. He was all too quick to believe the weakening of your barrier was thanks to his own Beedrill's doing, not your subtle commands, and he was even quicker to let you lead him right where you wanted him. All of them, played like harps, easy, easy, _easy_. The coward doesn't even stay to see the fruits of his mistake, running to the hills with his tail between his legs. It's for the better, though.  
  
You won't have _your Lugia_ looking upon such filth as him during your shared coronation.

 

( --- )

 

Utopia.  
  
Everything you have ever done has only been with the Pokemon in mind. If it is what it would take, you would gladly lay down your life for the cause you so frightfully believe in, as you know any of your own Pokemon would do in turn. Too many friends have died in your life, old, new, and all of them stripped from you by one common enemy: humanity. What good is a race that serves to gain by enslaving another? You're sickened by the fact that you were born under such a name, disgusted by the blood that runs through your veins. But Viridian Forest chose _you_ , of all people, to wield its power. Surely, you are meant for this, aren't you? Surely, everything you've been given and everything you have worked to achieve has been for the greater good? ( _Even if it wasn't, it's too late to turn back now. Cerise is nothing more than an earthly badge amplifier, and the flow of energy has already surged into the creature that you now take control of. You can feel its mind slipping beneath your will, its resistance softening and softening. You could tell it to eradicate them all, wipe out the mainland, cleanse this putrid world – if only_ he _hadn't followed you._ )  
  
Shield for an attack, attack for a shield, eye for an eye. His whole party undergoes one single, massive evolution, and the energy they give off is so _sickeningly_ familiar that you could almost cry. _You_ were the one blessed with the forest's powers. _You_ were its chosen one. Why does he fight you? Why does he call out to you, reaching, reaching? He makes it sound _so easy_ to give in – but you've come _far_ too far to give it all up now, and you will not be swayed by his warped visions of what is good and what is evil. You're the Dragon Master, Lance of the Elite Four, and you will _not_ be beaten, not so close to your perfect world –  
  
“Megavolt!”

 

( --- )

 

It's a memory – one you can't pinpoint in time, can't remember the befores or afters of. You see it in your dreams from the days you are young to the days you are old. Construction. Smog. The wild Pokemon that flee and, _worse_ , the ones who can't. Your Dratini rots in your arms faster than your powers, still developing can heal it, but you try and you try and you _try_ , because it _can't_ die now, it just _can't_.

You see it, now, crystal clear, as the air around you explodes and all of the noise in your ear dissolves into nothingness. You could almost tell yourself that you could touch him, that you of that past. Tell him it was all for naught.

You _couldn't_ lose. ( _But you did._ )  
  
Dratini dies. Your tears evaporate. The world is swallowed whole by light – and _yours_ turns to black.

 

( --- )

 

 _I should be dead_ is your first thought upon waking. _... I wish I was_ is your second.  
  
Fortune and fate work in mysterious ways, you've come to learn over the years, and if your beloved Viridian Forest had a plan for you when it bestowed upon you its secrets, you wish it would tell it to you outright. Your dreams of a utopia lay shattered like glass on the beach front you wake up to, parch mouthed, salt water vomit, and all, and you recall with hazy certainty the island you left disintegrating into nothingness with the blast that almost took your life.

 _Should have_ taken your life. Did he hold back, you wonder idly, or were you meant to survive for your higher fate? Even if it had been the former, you ponder your chances of survival out in the open sea, or worse, the chances of you waking to land instead of the bottomless ocean. Any thought of the culprit being one of your Pokemon is banished when you find your surroundings alone and the PokeBalls at your belt still broken at the button.  
  
Somehow, this is worse than death. If a fate worse than yours has befallen any of your party, you won't be able to forgive yourself.  
  
Impossibly, however, they find their own way back to you one by one, each more haggard and relief-flooded than the last. You stay on that miserable island for as long as it takes each one to return to your side, and you spend days longer with nothing but the sound of the wind through the trees and the idle thoughts of your party running through your mind. For a while, you wonder if you could stay here for the remainder of your life: an outcast, a castaway, cast to oblivion by a child who won the favor of _your forest_ over you. You've survived here just fine since you arrived, coercing the native Pokemon to aid you in your search for food and your quest for shelter. There aren't any humans _here_ , no one but you. Your own utopia, free of the industrial revolution's tar-tracked footprint.  
  
But the longer you remain, the more your mind wanders, questions of _why, why, why_ and _how, how, how_ molding and morphing into words you'd never been prepared to ask yourself. When you laid Vermillion City to waste, you'd thought only of the pity that was the lack of human lives stolen – but what if there had been Pokemon in those households, as well? What became of the bystanders on the mainland who were attacked and terrorized in your army's search for the Earth Badge? It had been something you'd never even considered in your hate-blinded rage, but now, it is all your mind will focus on. ( _A memory, new, flits through your mind, not of a Pokemon dying as a result of a fatal construction accident, but the trainer it called its friend. At the time, you hadn't been able to understand its grief. For its sake alone, not that of the family, you'd attempted to coax it it into eating, into moving, into_ really living again _– but it wouldn't, and just like its human companion, it died in solitude._  
  
( _You think of your own Pokemon, searching tirelessly through the great blue ocean for you and you alone._ Can _Pokemon live without humans?_ )  
  
“ _Aren't Pokemon_ your _friends, too?_ ”  
  
It had all seemed so foolish in the moment. Of course they were your friends. Of course you treated them with a kind and loving heart. Everything you had ever done since your youth had been in their name, for their sake. How could someone fighting to save unjust people and their unjust world ever claim to come close to the bond you shared with your Pokemon and the Pokemon of the world around you?  
  
… Right?

 

( --- )

 

It strikes you, later than you're proud to admit, that you had lost control over Lugia before you had even been blown away by the power of that horrible Megavolt. Had you not, it would have come searching for you like the rest, drawn to your energy like a Venomoth finds itself drawn to flame. You've never lost control of a Pokemon without reason before, and the only reason that you _could_ have hits you with all the force of a wild Graveller's _Rock Throw_. A trainer Pokemon. Your ultimate weapon _belonged_ to someone, and no one has put a legendary beast to proper use yet. Kanto may as well have built up iron walls around itself for as accessible it is to you ( _you'll see him if you return, you know, and you're not ready, you're not, you see him enough in your dreams_ ), so the only place to go is Johto, West, to the seas that your weapon had once called home.  
  
You don't realize it then, but you leave that little island of yours a changed man.

 

( --- )

 

Resistance was something you'd only expected from Kanto, given to you only at the hands of the Dex Holders and Team Rocket members who had seen your face in your battles at Cerise. It comes to you as a great shock, then, to find your pursuer of many weeks to be no more than a child, younger, even, than Yellow had been, attacking you in the dark of night and trying to make claims on your life. Fortunately for you, the difference in power between your assailant now and your assailant _then_ is leagues apart, though the fire you see burning in those eyes is so familiar that it makes you sick.

No one should have known where you were or what state of being you were trapped in. Dead? Alive? Surely, no one could have survived a Megavolt from Kanto's beloved blond hero, but no one can ever really be sure without the corpse washing up to prove it. Even Claire was kept at a distance, never so much as contacted since the start of your grand plans for world revolution. You hadn't wanted her involved in the Elite Four's plans then, and you can't risk her compromising your position in hiding. If there's a single shred of proof to be had that you're alive, the world would certain go combing for you in order to weed you out of it, so you haven't _let_ there be – and yet, this boy, all alone...  
  
You almost feel bad that you're not the person he's searching for. A simple glance into the memories of his tired-eyed Murkrow reveals all of his intentions in an instant. Apparently, the only qualification for becoming a target in this stranger's eyes are making moves toward controlling the great bird Pokemon scattered across this world. The kidnappings he wishes to investigate took place nine years ago, though, and while you were quite the trainer for your age, then, you certainly didn't have the skills, nor the ambition to control Lugia then and steal away _children_ , of all things.  
  
“I needed Lugia to create a utopia for Pokemon,” you explain. With less hesitance than you'd have thought, you add: “I have regrets about that, too – whether or not you believe me.”  
  
Regrets. Lance the Dragon Master, burdened by guilt. You've never said it out loud before, never even considered it in full, but now that you have, it hits you like the Magnet Train.  
  
Still, despite the fact that you aren't the man he's looking for, nor does he seem to pose much a threat even if he were to continue his pursuit of a challenge, you can't help but be drawn in by the ferocity you see there. You see yourself, a younger man ( _is it fair to call yourself that when you're only seventeen years of age?_ ) in that silver glare – but more than that, you see _potential_. You could let him leave, as he seems ready to do once he accepts your words and their meaning for what they are, but an idea races through your head faster than he can disappear into the night.

Your search for Lugia's owner has earned you clues few in number, though your encounter tonight has given you the feeling that you were right to abandon your island in pursuit of the mysterious man in Johto. If he's the strength to conquer Lugia, maintain his hold over it even after you've put your forest-given powers to use, this boy here will _certainly_ be slaughtered the instant he calls his first attack. More importantly to _you_ , though, that Murkrow looks like its growing depressed. You tell your underling-to-be exactly how it is, and he _bristles_.  
  
“Sounds like you know something about the Masked Man!”  
  
And wouldn't _he_ like to know...?

 

( --- )

 

You are not a kind master, as much because you do not know how to be as you cannot _afford_ to be. Silver is a wellspring of untapped talent, a boy fit to wield those Pokedexes that made the Dex Holders who defeated you one step away from victory six months ago, truly, but his stone-cold nature makes it hard for him to draw out the full potential of his Pokemon. _Again_ becomes a mantra as you kick him down once more, then another time, and repeatedly until he finally gets it right. If your shared enemy is as mighty as you fear, he'll have to be able to handle more than this if he hopes to succeed in his plans for revenge.  
  
What separates you from the Mask of Ice, however, unknowingly, is that you press ice to the black eyes he sustains during a slip, and you let him rest when his breath comes out haggard and wasted.  
  
“Do you want to stop?”  
  
“No. I'll keep going.”  
  
Not he _can_ keep going, not he _wants_ to keep going – he _will_ , until its right, until he's done it perfectly again and again. Sometimes, he reminds you so much of yourself that you pity him. There would be no greater shared defeat than coming so close to his goal only to have it ripped away from him – just like yours.  
  
Is it petty revenge that has you sending him after Professor Oak's Pokedex before all else? Maybe, deep down. When the idea comes to you, though, and when you give him his very first of many orders to come, all you can think of are the advantages it will afford him in the battles ahead. ( _Pokedexes don't make the trainers, however, you learn slowly. Pokedexes are given to those who will earn the right to hold them themselves._ ) Next is a Pokemon of the Johtoan Professor, a man named Elm; any of Silver's own choosing, they'll all turn out fine in the end. Go here – go there. Rockets sighted in Azalea town, then again in Ecruteak. You gather your intel through your pawn ( _though you wouldn't call him_ that _, you've already grown too attached_ ) as he fights tooth and nail against the corruption of this world and you stew in the safety and solitude of the Whirl Islands, unaware that Lugia stalked this vary chamber some many years prior. It's no surprise to find that the legendary you'd tried to take for yourself was not the only object of desire for the masked man, but Ho-oh as well, though what he plans to do with either remains a mystery for an aggravatingly long amount of time.  
  
You hear from Silver last when you send him north, to the Lake of Rage. At first, you assume his silence is an indication that unforeseen obstacles have been found, and that his report will come when he's found the time. When hours become _days_ , however, a single day turned to many a call to his PokeGear earns you nothing but static, something you _refuse_ call dread pools in your stomach.

So a... child died. What difference does it make to you, beyond the fact that you'll have to collect the finishing puzzle pieces yourself? With Team Rocket's resurgence, after all, few will be worried about bringing you to justice in favor of quashing the active threat. No, actually, what reason should you care? Let Team Rocket level the cities, let this Masked Man take control of legendary birds, let the human race perish like it was supposed to at your hands. You don't care, you don't care, _you don't_ –  
  
You sit on your throne of stone, and the silence echoes back to you louder than roar of Cerise Island's volcano. Idly, you think of Yellow and his silly straw hat.  
  
You weren't _supposed_ to care. Why do you now?

 

( --- )

 

Silver's not dead.  
  
You see yourself in him one final time when he enters your chamber without so much a word of warning, not a hint of an apology on his face for disappearing and leaving you to wonder if he was dead or alive. His Sneasel hooks its claws around your neck, razor sharp against your throat, and this, too, is all too familiar. But Silver has matured faster than you have, learned to take his loses and move past them without taking the brunt of a Megavolt, and you're almost loath to admit that there's nothing more you can teach him now.  
  
Six months seems like such a short time in hindsight – but you have your end of the bargain to uphold, and the thoughts and recollections of the very Sneasel who held you at the edge of death ( _you were never afraid_ ) are what put all the pieces together in place. It wasn't Ho-oh and Lugia that the Mask of Ice wanted, after all, but the feathers that covered their backs and the properties they held. The Rainbow Wing and Silver Wing: and what other destination is there but time itself?  
  
This is his final mission, then. You could go, too, you think, flying off on the back of your Dragonite to take the League by storm. If you aided in the Masked Man's capture, surely, the world and the Dex Holders would forgive you for your sins, and you could leave this awful place to walk, a free man, once more. But you don't. Maybe some part of you doesn't want that forgiveness, not yet.  
  
( _Impossibly, with one person, you can't help but feel you already have it._ )  
  
The Indigo Plateau is in shambles by nightfall, connections region-wide cut and the gym leaders' lives in a state of limbo. Come dawn, though, the survivors ruffle their feathers, pick each other back up from the rubble. A gym remains empty as reconstruction begins. Another set of Dex Holders are heralded heroes across the land.

This isn't your victory by any means. You played no active role, fought no battles, saved no lives – and yet your heart feels light, your mind strangely at peace as the terrible arc of Neo Team Rocket comes to a final close.  
  
You think it's about time you called your cousin.

 

( --- )

 

It's been many years since you last stepped foot in Viridian City or the forest beyond, but you feel it welcoming you as a mother would her prodigal son. Perhaps that's what you are: destructive, _wasteful_ , returning home with nothing to show for all your fighting and rage. No one stops you when you step past the threshold, nor do they bother to look your way as you pass, slow, each step hesitant as you step down familiar streets.

Home, though, your _real_ home is beyond that line of trees, in the tangling thickness of foliage and bramble, by the river that runs quiet and the Pokemon that laugh joyously. You want to see it again. You want to feel the leaves beneath your fingertips and breath the air in through your nostrils, in, out, repeat, pure oxygen flowing through you like the power the land blessed you with.  
  
But you see a flash of hair, _yellow_ , and you leave. It may not even be him – wouldn't he have called if it was, even if only in shock? – but you don't care to stick around long enough to find out. No more forest. No more city. No more Viridian.  
  
Amarillo del Bosque Verde has made you a coward.  
  
( _In the years that follow the Mask of Ice's defeat, you catch a broadcast lazily in the periphery of your vision heralding praises for Hoenn's latest and greatest Battle Frontier. Any other subject would have had you scoffing at the absurdity of it all, but not this one. Instead, you find yourself transfixed on the image they show of one beautifully crafted statue, carved by loving hands to pay tribute to the five Dex Holders that saved the Sevii Islands and the mainland beyond from Team Rocket's third and potentially most disastrous attack. It's not the ponytail that runs down her –_ her _, not_ his, her _– head. It's not jealousy. It's that you know it for what it is in an instant – a string cut, a connection snapped. There's no reason why you should, but you_ do _, and a feeling unknown to you fills your heart and mind in an instant._  
  
( _Is it fair to grieve for the loss of the person who ripped your dreams from your bloodied, raw hands? Is it fair to grieve for a girl you never really knew?_ )  
  
_Fairness_ never factored into the equation. You find yourself grieving, anyway.

 

( --- )

 

You vow to be better a better man.  
  
For the Pokemon of the world. For yourself. For _her_. She could have killed you that horrible night, but she didn't, and you think you're beginning to see what it was in yourself that she saw from the beginning that kept her from finishing you then and there. The forest would not lend its power to a man whose capacity only allowed for destruction, nor would it give its graces to a man forever static, resistant to the changes of the world and the change required to keep it in line. At the very least, you have hurt Pokemon and human alike, and while you find your heart breaking less over the latter than you probably ought to, you will not stand by and let the murderer of your _friends_ go unpunished, even if the one with their blood on his hands is you, yourself.  
  
Where the information comes from is unnecessary. What matters is, three years after the revival of the Kanto Dex Holders, Arceus makes a re-emergence in your world, and with his anger spells the inevitable destruction of both Johto and Sinnoh. You're the only one who knows, save for the monsters who brought this along ( _Team Rocket,_ again _, a thorn in your side from the very beginning: destroying your forest, destroying your plans, destroying everything in their path_ ), so you will continue to atone for your mistakes and aid in the protection of the Pokemon you love. If your speculation serves correct, you believe the legendary spoken of in the ancient Johtoan myth that bred the PokeAthlon to be the world-maker itself, and your best chances of quelling its anger are leading it to a place that will remind it of the hero who won its favor in generations long forgotten. _You_ , however, are no hero. Unsuited for the task. What you _need_ is a Dex Holder.  
  
( _Who you need is Yellow._ )  
  
It hangs on the tip of your tongue when you record your message to Professor Oak. There is, perhaps, no one better suited for the task of reopening the heart of God than the girl who has managed to open yours without saying so much as a word in all of these years. Her powers, forest-given or earned by no one but herself would finish the job in a matter of moments. ( _You want to see her again, after all this time, not just through a screen, not just in your minds eye, there's so much to say, so much to apologize for –_ ) But this is why you're not a hero. The hero you _need_ is obvious, _there_ , behind your teeth, but you ask for any Dex Holder that may be spared because you're _scared_. There's so much to be said – but could you say it? Would she even want to listen? Miserably, you realize that you wouldn't blame her if she didn't.  
  
It doesn't matter in the end. Petrel finds you first, well before the faceless Dex Holder ever arrives. ( _He's wearing her face, mimicking her voice, and you can't,_ you can't – )  
  
You could have beaten him, you know. His tactics are dirty, but yours can get _dirtier_ , and at least you've the brute strength to win a match of pure offensive power, no strings attached. You _should_ have beaten him there. But you're coward. You didn't deserve the victory, anyway.

 

( --- )

 

You shouldn't have doubted the spikey-haired boy Professor Oak had sent you for a moment. In a roundabout way, you suppose, it had been your doubt in his abilities that allowed him to open up not only to his Togepi-turned-Togekiss, but the legendary to end all legendaries, but knowing the children you've known, it was an inevitability that he would have reached on his own, with or without your aid. Pokedexes don't make trainers, after all. You should know that better than most from the experience you've gained first-hand.  
  
You're embarrassed to admit the reason for your defeat to him, more than you are ashamed that you actively sought out the aid of your former enemies in order to put a stop to the region's latest threat. Perhaps you are vague enough, or if you're especially fortunate, Gold will have no relation to Yellow at all to speak of what you've done here today and in the days that led up to it. This is, again, not your victory. You did not calm Arceus. You hadn't even the strength to arrive at your rendezvous point at the PokeAthlon. Only when the victory is really, truly _yours_ will you be able to face the world again in full: Lance the Dragon Master, reformed and repented.  
  
Silver has grown even stronger in your absense, you note. The three of them – your old pupil, the boy who opened Arceus' heart, and a girl you vaguely remember as The Catcher – banter and tease, old friends reunited and connected before your very eyes. Despite yourself, you can't help but feel a tug at your heart at the sight. Perhaps you could have had this in your youth: friends to depend on, banter to be had, crushes to make your face warm and your tongue sputter nonsense. Instead, you pushed all others away, traded them in for a dream of genocide.  
  
There are only six years separating you from them, and yet you can't help but feel miles and miles away.

 

( --- )

 

It's exposure therapy... although calling it that makes it sound so _dour_. In truth, you find your chest tightening and your throat clogging with anxiety every time you try to return home. Silly, you're aware. You've conquered wild, untameable creatures with little more than an exertion of your will, put the strongest trainers of the world beneath your foot time and time again, and yet breathing in the Viridian air is enough to lock your body up like a case.

You can't avoid it forever, however. Your parents have moved away, perhaps fleeing from memories too painful of their own, but your connection to those woods runs deeper than anyone but _her_ could understand, and you will not let that day so long ago hold you back any further. Between the law studies you have taken up ( _if you cannot help your friends through violence, then you will punish their abusers through the courts_ ) and the sparring sessions you've picked up with Lorelei and Bruno to keep your skills as razor sharp as ever, you make a point to traverse further and further from the edge of the city as you can, closing in ever closer on the house in the forest you were raised in. It's slow. Arduous. Some days, you only make it a single extra step before a stranger in a sunhat looks your way and you're overcome with fear you cannot rationalize. The fruits of your effort only become clear when you take your first assured step into the lush green that sings to you _home_.  
  
Being here is enough to flood you with liquid courage, and suddenly, you feel like a boy again, freed from both the weight of your sins and the ancient hatred that put them there. Every tree is the same, every voice you hear without effort is a familiar cry. The sights, the smells, the feeling: it's _liberating_.  
  
And then you find her.  
  
You hadn't even realized how far you'd gone until you're there by the old stream, leaves fluttering down from trees, sketches of Pokemon and trainers you half-recognize littered about, and a sleeping girl and her Pikachu curled up around a forgotten fishing rod. And she _is_ , most certainly, a _she_ , so blatantly that you'd almost scold yourself for ever thinking she was anything but had it not been for the baby faces of children and how well they all blend together in your head. Still, _this_ had not been the scenario your brain had built in your head. For one thing, you had planned to have something to show for it: tangible evidence of a broken heart stitched sloppily back together, lives saved and a villain reformed because of her influence. For another, in your head, she had always most certainly been _awake_.  
  
How easy it would be to rouse her – to reach out your hand – to prove that she isn't just an image in your mind given form before your eyes – ( _So much to say, so much to say._ )  
  
By the time she wakes, you are long gone.  
  
( _Coward._ )

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't cut out the story-related bits (although I did cut out the last section of this because it was entirely dependent on site context, so sorry if that ending doesn't feel like a proper ending) this time because they don't hog fifteen thousand words of story telling y'all already know. 'Sides, I always think it's neat seeing stories from the vantage of non-main characters - villain and side character, in Lance's case - and his roles are small enough or could have been expanded on enough that I didn't figure there was any need to cut them out. Hopefully they don't feel like rehashed information. ;u;
> 
> I think it's important to note that I've been absolute GrantedShipping trash since, like, nine-year-old me figured out Yellow was a girl via the influence of DeviantArt (because RIP, I grew up on The Best of Pokemon Adventures instead of the actual volumes, there is SO much lost context, sdkjflhsdjkfsdh). Hopefully it wasn't laid on too heavy, but??? For the first time??? In my life??? Someone agreed to do GrantedShipping with me, so I was gonna milk that for what it's worth. Usually I'm the Yellow, and the Lance writer is like, "Um... Noooooo..." Anyway, I tagged it just in case, so hopefully no one's upset. *sweats* ALSO important to note is that bit about law study at the end is completely credit to my friend Dei, who, when I expressed my lack of ideas for a proper occupation suggested making him a lawyer specializing in Pokemon abuse cases. How perfect, am I right? At the VERY least, it gave him more stuff to do than just bumming around in moist caves.
> 
> Okay, but the next Pokemon fic I post is gonna be something other than a heavy-winded character study, I promise. I PROMISE. Hopefully you'll stay tuned for *gasp* actual fanfiction. <3
> 
> Title comes from the Megadeth song of the same name!


End file.
